Tag: social issues

Last Meals: transcript for Goethe research

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Link to the video essay: https://youtu.be/7m0oJRAywZ4

Transcript and Sources:

My choice of a last meal used to be enchiladas and negro modello, bottle wrapped in a wet paper towel and frozen, based on a dinner I had on a vacation where my partner and I went to random places around the country on an aimless week long road trip.
But that doesn’t feel right anymore. I had been researching the idea of last meals for a short story, a fact I’m going to mention again in this video because I made this out of order, haha, and I think I need an update. Something more me now and less me in my 20s.
That meal doesn’t have the connotations it used to.

When my great grandfather came to the United States he came with a copy of Dante’s Inferno and it wasn’t until I started researching last meals that I realized Faust has the same level of cultural relevance and importance to Germans that Dante has to Italians. I mean, most of our popular ideas of hell come from Dante’s Inferno, not Christian doctrine, and Faust has just as much significance.

A quick tour for those not familiar with Doctor Faustus and the many versions of his tragedy, most popularly I’m going into site Goethe’s Faust; Faust is a protagonist of the German legend based on the historical Johanna Georg Faust.

The general jist is that Faust, an academic and narcissistic man, becomes dissatisfied and depressed, and after an attempt on his own life, he calls on the Devil to make a bargain–hence the term Faustian. Mephistopheles, a demon, appears, and makes a bargain with Faust for knowledge and pleasure in exchange for his soul.

The historical Faust was an alchemist, magician, and scholar of the German Renaissance, born sometime in the mid 1400s, there’s some discrepancy on when. There’s scattered mention of him in first hand sources for the next hundred years, often performing magical acts or giving horoscopes to important officials and royals, only to be banished for being a freaky mystic. He is thought to have died in 1540 or 1541 as the result of an explosion in his alchemical lab. There are many written works in the early 1500s ascribed to Doctor Faust, detailing magical incantation, some of them falsely ascribed to being written during his lifetime.

Goethe’s Faust has a romantic bent and proclaims that Faust gained his metaphysical and esoteric knowledge from the aforementioned deal with the devil. But the story is, in a way, truly about Gretchen.

Gretchen is also based on a historical figure, Susanna Margaretha Brandt, a woman who famously convicted of and executed for infanticide, claiming that she was under demonic possession. She had been drugged and raped, conceiving the child, then got rid of it once it was born. Goethe was familiar with Brandt as several friends and family members were directly involved in her court case and the young Goethe lived in very close proximity to her. He worked her story into the story of Faust, saying that the principal reason she Was led astray was by Faust, selfishly pursuing carnal and secular pleasures, and that while both were temped by Mephistopheles, Gretchen is the character whom repents and is therefore absolved.

The historical Susanna Margaretha Brandt has a famous last meal, which she refused and instead only drank water, giving the meal to the guards.

Out of kindness, the guards then lied to her, saying her head would not be impaled after her execution, but she was beheaded and gibbeted to serve as a deterrent.

In the story by Goethe, this young woman he was familiar with was vindicated and allowed into heaven for turning away the selfish, depressive, and miserable Faust and shunning bargains with him a Mephistopheles when she could have evaded her fate, she chose to face it. For the real Susanna Margaretha Brandt, however, she suffered a brutal death at the hands of men, because of the actions of men.

Access Esoteric Works Attributed to Johann Georg Faust at:

https://books.google.com/books?id=ESpXAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA7#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_v-tXAAAAYAAJ/page/154/mode/1up?view=theater

Das Kloster (full title Das Kloster. Weltlich und geistlich. Meist aus der ältern deutschen Volks-, Wunder-, Curiositäten-, und vorzugsweise komischen Literatur ) is a collection of magical and occult texts, fairy tales and legends of the German Renaissance compiled by Stuttgart antiquarian Johann Scheible in 12 volumes, 1845-1849. Vols. 3, 5 and 11 are dedicated to the Faust Legend.

Review: You Feel it Just Below the Ribs

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You Feel it Just Below the Ribs
Jeffrey Cranor, Janina Matthewson

Wheewwww
I loved it. I struggled with it a bit because it feels at times too unreal and at other times too close to home, which I imagine is exactly the sliver of reality is seeks to exist between.
I have realized something very crucial in reading this book; I would follow Jeffrey Cranor into the ocean. Which I imagine would be terrifying for him, but I love the biting realism in this dystopian thriller.
Typically, I am not a fan of books told in journal format, it’s just not my preference, but this was excellently written, sci-fi horror.
I absolutely recommend it for people who like darker, more realistic portrayals in their fiction.

Review: Yellowface

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I was thinking about what I could do for my last review of the spooky season and I thought “Did I talk about ‘Yellowface’ yet?” I went back and checked. I haven’t. I need to.

Yellowface by RF Kuang is not billed as a horror story exactly.

It is horror, I would argue. The ‘satirical novel’ (read:horror) takes a deep dive into the publishing industry, white privilege, racism, the persecution complex of white authors, the dismissive attitudes toward Asian voices, the tokenism and more in a way that is so educational, so detailed, as to be exhaustive.

It follows a white woman who, deeply jealous and entitled, steals her successful Asian friend’s manuscript after her death and publishes it. It examines the lengths to which this white woman goes, publishing under a misleadingly Asian sounding name, claiming that anyone can write any topic with her own touch of persecution, justifying her theft by claiming her research into being able to edit the novel makes her an expert, having a sensitivity reader fired, dealing with the deceased’s family and friends, destroying evidence, and turning up in Asian cultural centers trying to promote “her” writing.

As it all unravels, the novel is full of suspense and agitation. And I just have to say….have you ever read a novel and thought, ‘The author thinks about this all of the time.’ Not ‘the author thinks about this all of the time because obviously she wrote a book about it’ but ‘the author has had this fear and idea curling in the back of her skull for at least a decade, and it is a privilege I have not to have thought about it’? That’s the tone of Yellowface.

Never Whistle At Night

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As always when I read any collection of short stories there are particular ones which catch my attention, but I really can’t stress how much I enjoyed ‘Never Whistle at Night’. The collection is extremely well put together, spanning a variety of topics impacting indigenous communities, whether that be indigenous folk lore inspired, inspired by racism, classism, internalized trauma, religious trauma, or all of the above and of course more. The cultural weight of each story has its place in the anthology.

The editors deserve all the credit in the world, it’s a wonderful collection. Please support them.

Camp Damascus

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It’s October! I should do some spooky books.

Starting the month with Dr Chuck Tingle, Camp Damascus is hands down one of the best books I have read this year. A quick read under 300 pages, it is one of these most effective horror stories I have read in ages. Centered around religious trauma and homophobia, the action begins almost immediately, with no ‘wait till the third act’ nonsense. Shit hits the fan, and hard, and keeps coming. Dr Tingle takes no time to bullshit around with building suspense, the true horror comes from the nonchalant reactions and denials of the clear horrors occuring.
The main character’s neurodivergence was written so naturally and well, it was a wonderfully refreshing representation that I didn’t realize I had been craving.
Easily one of my favorite books of the year, I absolutely encourage you to read it, I am so excited for his next book that I know is in editing stages.

Prove love 💕